NANO IS HERE. Believe it.

Sunday

Feb 22, 2015 at 7:14 AMFeb 22, 2015 at 7:19 AM

Nanotechnology is coming. Believe it. In fact, nanotechnology is here.

Editor’s note: The Observer-Dispatch editorial board toured the Computer Chip Commercialization Center — known as Quad-C — on Thursday to get an inside look at the facility that is nearing completion on the SUNY Polytechnic Institute campus in Marcy. Guiding the tour was John Rhude, construction manager for M+W Group, which is overseeing the project.

People in the Mohawk Valley have reason to be skeptical when it comes to economic development. After the loss of Griffiss Air Force Base, Chicago Pneumatic, Lockheed–Martin and other major employers, pessimism was prevalent.

We had been burned too many times after promises were made:

-- In 1996, Interface Services Inc. of East Syracuse and Cherokee Sanford Group of Raleigh, N.C., said they wanted to build a brick-making plant at Harbor Point. Then-Mayor Edward A. Hanna said the project could create as many as 200 jobs. The plan sank like a brick.

-- A year later, Mobile Climate Control, a Canadian manufacturer of heating and cooling systems for the transportation industry, built a $5 million plant at CharlesTown. The company promised to create 100 jobs by 2002. By 2001, there were just 25 employees. By 2005, they were all gone.

-- In 2002, then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton came to town and pitched a company called Scienx that wanted to move to Griffiss Business and Technology Park. It specialized in optical imaging software and anti-counterfeiting technology. Company executives passed out glitzy business cards and said they planned to create 45 jobs immediately and have about 120 jobs by June 2004. Nothing happened.

So it’s understandable that some would believe nanotechnology to be just another pipe dream.

It’s not.

Nanotechnology is coming. Believe it. In fact, nanotechnology is here.

In a meeting with the Observer-Dispatch editorial board Feb. 12, SUNY Polytechnic Institute President Alain Kaloyeros said that there already are jobs on the ground.

SUNY Poly has 215 researchers and faculty members and about 350 more people already are working for some of the existing tenants who will occupy the Computer Chip Commercialization Center in Marcy, known as Quad-C.

They currently are housed off site, he said, but will move in when the building is ready. It is scheduled to open this summer.

Quad-C was due to be completed late last year, but the opening was delayed for

a very good reason: It’s going to be much bigger than planned. In January, numerous expansion plans were announced, upping the investment for the structure alone from $125 million to as much as $250 million or more. Earlier projections had estimated that the total public and private investment in Quad-C, including the expensive tools used in chip making, to be $1.5 billion. As many as 1,500 jobs were anticipated. Now, total jobs could be as many as 2,000.

On Thursday, the O-D editorial board toured the nearly 300,000-square-foot facility, which might best be described as something right out of science fiction.

But this is science fact.

“There are two main reasons why this area was selected for this facility,” said John Rhude, construction manager for M+W Group, which is overseeing the project. “Abundant water and the closest thing to uninterruptible power (Marcy substation) in New York state.”

Quad-C will need both. It’s an enormous facility, a complex network of sophisticated systems that have kept hundreds of construction workers and other skilled trades people busy for nearly two years. Construction came with assorted delays — Quad-C has been promised since 2009 — and that fueled skepticism from some who believe it would never happen.

But the delays due to expansion are very real. During Thursday’s tour, Rhude pointed to specific areas that are being re-appropriated to provide more clean room space that has been requested by clients. Other rooms in the building housing things like cooling units have been built with space for additional units in the future. A “clean” hallway would become shared space if it was decided to add another building in the future.

Quad-C is, in a word, magnificent. From a 26,000-square foot clean room where, Rhude says the air is 10 times cleaner than that in a hospital surgical room — to fourth floor administrative space that offers a sweeping panoramic view of the city of Utica, Quad-C is poised to open a new chapter in regional economic development.

During his Feb. 12 visit with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Kaloyeros said the expansion would make Nano Utica the top facility west of Albany across upstate. And while neither he nor Cuomo would say who the anchor tenants would be, citing confidentiality agreements, Kaloyeros remains steadfast in his commitment to make this happen.

“I am not sticking my neck out and spending $125 million on a site in the middle of nowhere just to prove a point,” he said in September 2013 shortly after the public/private nano partnership was announced.

Now with that ante raised to $250 million or more, Kaloyeros and others are even more determined to see it through.

“There is going to be an exciting announcement from the governor,” he said.

The Mohawk Valley anxiously waits.

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